Friday 18 November 2011

I've been walking...




... and enjoying the autumn colours and mists. Since my last post, I've re-discovered the joy of St James' park (the ducks and swans; the great swathes of green hidden in the middle of the city), and got lost in Westminster (I thought I knew the streets of central London so well that I'd never lose my bearings again, and then all of a sudden, I was foxed by a maze of side streets between Victoria station and the back of Buckingham Palace). Up in Scotland last week, the leaves were still vivid, though falling fast, and in Berlin the day before yesterday, they were swirling across no-man-land...
My head is still reeling from my first ever trip to Germany (to Berlin and Hamburg, for the new German edition of Chanel), but my feet have kept me grounded, even on those journeys where I have lost my sense of direction, and then returned me to more familiar territory...

9 comments:

Caroline said...

Glad to have you back safe and sound!

Justine Picardie said...

Thanks; it's nice to be home...

whitney - see shop eat do said...

beautiful images!

whitney
seeshopeatdo.com

Justine Picardie said...

Thank you; the joys of snapping away on an iphone (it's my dear diary...)

jaywalker said...

Are you pleased about the cover? it's certainly different from the other two I have. It has a certain "Germanic" air about it!
I've only been to Berlin twice on day trips but I know what you mean about overwhelming. It's beautiful but not in the same way as many of the other European capitals. Perhaps we can never disassociate ourselves from some of its symbolism and history.

kairu said...

Glad you're back!

The weather has been getting chillier and chillier, which I've been warding off with hot chocolate and my softest, fuzziest robe (which wraps me from neck to ankle; I look like a bear). But the sun has been surprising us, turning the last of the fall leaves into flames...

I planted my first wave of paperwhite narcissi a few weeks back, in tall glass vases. Thinking, as always, of Elspeth Thompson and how I first found her here...Already the roots are spreading through the gravel and green leaves shooting skywards.

enid said...

I am back home and Cape Town is boiling hot. I loved bummeling around in London and the autumn is very lovely there. I too just walked and walked - it is very good for the soul and mind. It was great to see you too. I am reading Secret Garden. Glad to have you back in blogland

Justine Picardie said...

Enid -- it was lovely to see you in London, and good to think of you now in the warmth of Cape Town -- I'm still hoping someone will ask me to talk at a literary festival there!
Jaywalker: where does one begin with Berlin? The fallen wall? The Brandenberg Gate? The past seems overwhelmingly present (to me, at least, as an outsider).
Kairu: Elspeth would have been glad, I'm sure, to read that you were inspired by her, and that paper-white flowers continue to grow in the winter...

Lilacs said...

I love your photos, the top one looks like a tapestry.